The first week of this year.

The school year, that is. We started school on Monday. The children were ready and so was I, so why not? Once of the nice things about home schooling is you can set your own schedule with what works for your family. I actually would love to do year ‘round school, but out Summer schedule is so CRAZY there is no way I could work it around school! So we take June and July off, and start again mid August.

It’s now mid August.

The week went quite well, for which I’m grateful. I thought long and hard about what our schedule should be. With full disclosure in mind, you should know that I am not a natural born schedule follower. But I have learned at least a little bit of self disciple in my 32 years of life and so I have high hopes for this school year. Well, at least the first week of school went well. So that’s a good start.

Here is our school schedule. It is not set in stone, but is a rather firm outline. Yes, school is important and set times need to happen/be met, but with a family business things still need to be flexible. Like when the mother doesn’t get up when she’s supposed to, so breakfast is an hour late your husband needs your help to get food done on time for a function. You know. Things like that.

I do require ALL children ( minus Caleb ) to sit at the table during school time hours. This is the first year I have required this and while it was a bit harry on the very first day, it has gotten better. Nathaniel and Damaris now know that they have to stay at the table doing quiet work.

And no, I’m not above bribing them with chocolate if they stay there nicely. A Mom’s gotta do what a Mom’s gotta do. (Of course, I will slowly wean them off the candy bribe, but I need to start somewhere since I didn’t start at the beginning like I should have. )

So, I never actually got up at 6 am, it was like 6:15 or 6:20. But I was in bed before 10:30 each night. Does that count? And I made breakfast each morning this week. That’s HUGE for me folks!!